The Olympics

Coming up to the 2012 London Olympics, most people in the UK were a bit apathetic about it. They were worried about transport, the weather and the UK's general recent inability to do anything properly. Some people however were fairly excited about getting to watch two weeks of sport. I was in the latter category.

I had applied for a lot of tickets in the original ballot in April 2011, but had only been successful in getting tickets to one event - the highly sought after Beach Volleyball. Since then I had also put my name down for one football match at Wembley (despite my opinion that football shouldn't be at the Olympics).

As the start of the Olympics approached, it became apparent that there were still tickets available - some were being returned from other countries who hadn't sold their allocation, some were being returned by individuals who had found they couldn't go, and some became available as the final seating plans of the venues were decided. The trick was to go regularly onto the official ticketing website to see what new tickets had come up and then be the first to sign up for them. As the days went by, this tactic became more and more refined. A computer programmer wrote a program that checked the official website and told you when the tickets you wanted came up for sale. At the same time, you could use another program which regularly refreshed the official site to ensure that your log-in details were entered so that you could beat everyone else in the rush to add the tickets to your basket when they became available.

Using a variety of these methods, I managed to get myself some sought after tickets for the athletics at the Olympic Stadium, some handball tickets and some tennis tickets for Wimbledon (another sport which shouldn't be at the Olympics). Then some friends had spare tickets to join them at Hockey and Tae Kwon Do. So I had ended up with a decent range of tickets, and only tens of chargeable hours spent searching for them...

My first interaction with the Games took place in the days before the Games started - I saw a man run along the road in Southfields with the Olympic Torch. Then a few days later, as I was so excited, I saw the torch go past again - this time in the barge Gloriana going along the river past my flat. 

So the Games started, and there had only been a 'small' error with the South Korean flag being shown at a North Korean football match when the opening ceremony started on TV. I thoroughly enjoyed that, as I think most people did - the UK putting across its history in a quirky and fun way.

The next day was the men's cycle road race, going practically past my front door. However, I'd been invited to a wedding out of town so I wasn't there to watch it. But I was there the following day as the women's road race came past on the same route. So Lizzie Armitstead whizzing past in a split second behind a Dutch rider was my first live action of the Olympics.

My first visit to the Olympic Park came the next day. That was the Hockey. We got two matches for the princely sum of £20. I took the opportunity to have a wander around the park before the matches started. It all looked quite impressive. The Aquatic Centre, the Olympic Stadium, the Orbit structure - all wonderful buildings. The hockey though was in a temporary structure at the other end of the park. We grabbed a Massaman curry from the wide array of food stalls and went to see our sport. Team GB were playing in the first match, so there was a great atmosphere. The final score was 4-1 to GB against our old Falkland rivals Argentina. A mass exodus took place after that, so the attendance in the next match, Belgium vs Germany was much reduced. Still a lot of fun though. As it was our first visit to the Park, we took the transport warnings seriously and tried a different route to get home, rather than just catching the tube from Stratford. We walked to Bow Road station instead. It was a dark and fairly scary route and it wasn't particularly quick anyway. Judging from my experiences on later trips to the park, that may have been a mistake.

I had a day off from sporting action on the Tuesday, so my next action was the men's football at Wembley. The draw had been made a few weeks previously, so I already knew that I was going to see one of the highlights of the Olympic fortnight, the big guns of the tournament battling it out to advance from the group stages. Yes, I went to South Korea against Gabon. The match lived up to its pre-tournament billing, ending as it did 0-0.

The following day was a bit of a warm one. That was time for my first ever visit to Wimbledon - at least to the All England Tennis Club part of Wimbledon, I've been to the area before. As I'm not a massive tennis fan usually, I've never felt it was worth the cost of me going there. But, as it was the Olympics... And in fact I really enjoyed it. I had tickets for Court One, so thought I wouldn't to see any big names. But I did - after seeing Maria Sharapova warming up by playing football with her coach on the way, the first match was Andy Murray in the singles, playing Nicolas Almagro. So I saw the future Olympic Champion playing! Then it was Serena Williams vs former world number one, even though she's not really that good and is more famous, possibly, for going out with Rory McIlroy than her tennis skills, Caroline Wozniaki. That was a bit one-sided, Serena Williams finished things off  fairly quickly. The next match was a tight match, very closely matched. It was Juan Martin Del Potro against Kei Nishikori. A big powerful player against the little man running around and never giving up on anything. Del Potro eventually ran out the winner.  Then Andy Murray was back, this time accompanied by Laura Robson in the mixed doubles. They won after a 'Champions Tie-Break'.

Friday was another day at home, but there was a busy weekend coming up. Saturday began with the trip to the Olympic Stadium for the athletics. What an amazing stadium! What an amazing atmosphere! We saw great sport too - although there was so much going on that it was difficult to know where to look. Most importantly we saw Jessica Ennis in the Long Jump and the Javelin, the fifth and sixth events of the Heptathlon, and was so far ahead by the end of the morning that she had practically won the Gold by the time the session finished. We saw Usain Bolt in the 100m and Oscar Pistorius in the 400m. It was a really great morning's entertainment. 

In the afternoon, we rushed back into town to see the Beach Volleyball. Unfortunately, the first match we saw was a men's match. But then we got to see a women's match, which was better as the rallies were much more skilful! The matches were quite fun, but it wasn't really a proper sport. A good afternoon's entertainment, but not the best sport we'd seen.

The Sunday involved a trip back to the Olympic Park for a bit of Handball at the Copper Box ('the box that rocks'). I didn't know a lot about the rules of the sport, and it was quite interesting, but not something I'll make a particular effort to see again. There were two matches included in the ticket, both women's matches. At half time in one of the matches, they showed the 100m final on the big screen so we didn't miss out!

The next week was a bit quieter for live events. I only had the Tae Kwon Do towards the end of the week. That was another sport that was fun to go to, had a fairly good atmosphere, but not sure I'll bother again.  I did get to see Jade Jones, who won the gold later in the day, in her quarter-final and semi-final bouts. She did a bit of bouncing on the spot interspersed with occasional attempts to kick her opponent in the head. These seemed to be the general rules of the sport.

I didn't have any more paid tickets for the Olympics, but managed to fit in a trip to Westminster to see the men's marathon go past.

That was the end of an amazing couple of weeks of sporting action. The weather had been good, the transport had been great, the games were a huge success!

So there was time for me to go away for a few days before the Paralympics were on. I used the same ticketing tactics and techniques to get myself some pretty good seats for the swimming and some slightly less good seats for the final day of athletics. The swimming was interesting, there were lots of people with a variety of ailments and missing limbs. I got to see Ellie Simmonds in one of her heats. Then the athletics was ok - there weren't many Brits competing on that evening, so the atmosphere wasn't that great. Until, that is, Oscar Pistorius came out for the 400m final. He won by a distance and the crowd went crazy! Even though he isn't a Brit, he was hugely popular. Our seats didn't seem to exist when we arrived, but there was a large concrete gantry where TV cameras had presumably been for the Olympics. There were some folding chairs propped up in the corner of the area, so we used those. Actually, even though we were right at the back, the view was still great. 

It was possibly the greatest summer of sport I've been privileged enough to see. I had a decent number of tickets to live events in the end. Unfortunately, I didn't see any Gold medal events decided during the Olympics, but I made up for that during the Paralympics athletics, as there are just so many different events. Too many in my opinion, but that's an argument for another day.

My final involvement with the Olympics and Paralympics was when I went down to the city to see the Team GB athletes on their Open-Top Bus parade.

Download Festival

I'd never been to a music festival before. I like my music, but am more happy listening at home on the radio or a CD. Even these days, as I am of course down with the kids, I might listen to my music on an 'I-Pod'. I have been to a few concerts, or gigs as we cool cats call them, over the years, but hadn't ever really been that excited by the idea of a music festival. Loud music for days, camping in a muddy field with thousands of other people, not washing, that was the kind of thing that had always put me off. I had had a couple of previous encounters with the great unwashed as they left the Reading Festival and that had added to my negative thoughts of this medium of entertainment.

But I figured I should try it once. My friends were going and they asked me if I was interested. They won me over my some of the following arguments: we would stay in an apartment and not camp; the apartment would have toilets and washing facilities; and the festival would not be a standard indie one like Reading or Glastonbury, but would involve lots and lots of heavy rock and metal! That is one of my preferred musical genres. The headliners were Metallica, who had agreed to play their Black Album in entirety on the 20th anniversary of its release. That is an album I have enjoyed over the years. So I did sign up and parted with a fairly large amount of money in order to partake in this endeavour.

The Friday arrived and the weather was a continuation of that of the summer to that date - not that warm and pouring with rain. As we drove up the M1, we discovered that the site was so muddy that the opening of the car park had been put back a couple of hours. Not a good start for someone who was trying to avoid a weekend of trampling through mud. We were stuck in traffic anyway, so by the time we actually arrived, the site was in fact open. 

The state of the site was as bad as I had feared. Squidgy, stodgy, sticky mud which tried to pull my walking shoes from my feet every time I lifted my legs. I suppose not all of the site was that bad, and the areas around the main and second stages were ok. We set up our folding chairs near the second stage and settled in for a bit of Terrorvision. Due up next were Europe, and we were looking forward to them reprising their massive hit 'The Final Countdown'. However, due to the inclement weather, they had been unable to travel. So we missed our chance to listen to that song again, and had half an hour without music. 

The rest of the afternoon was mainly spent around the second stage. We moved to the main stage towards the evening to grab some food and then get a good spot for anyone who wanted to see the Prodigy who were headlining that evening. That was the biggest mistake we made over the whole weekend. We had to endure 'Chase and Status' with their unique style of electronically produced dance music. I had decided I wasn't going to watch the Prodigy, as Slash was on the second stage at the same time and he was by far the bigger draw for me. So Desy and I wandered over to the second stage, to be greeted by epic orchestral sounds, pyrotechnics and a Scandinavian female vocalist as Nightwish were finishing their set. We had spent an hour of 'Chase and F-ing Status' as the 'vocalist' liked to call  them (albeit that he tended to replace the hyphen so that he formed an actual word), when we could have been listening to that soaring orchestral Scandinavian music instead. What a mistake!

Slash himself was great, accompanied by a vocalist (fortunately Slash himself didn't sing!). He played a set that was basically alternating Guns 'N Roses songs and his own work.He finished slightly earlier than the Prodigy so we got to see the last couple of their songs. I'm not convinced we missed much!

Leaving the car park took a while, as the rain meant that a lot of people managed to get their cars stuck in the mud. We had a four-by-four and were fine, but had to wait until the lanes were clear enough for us to get past. And so Desy very kindly drove us to the apartment for our few hours of luxury. Beds and showers!

The Saturday followed a similar pattern. We arrived slightly earlier and then the day was spent rushing from stage to stage to tent to stage trying to catch the acts worth seeing. Most of the sets we saw were pretty good, but it was exhausting hurrying around, standing up through each set. The afternoon at the main stage was a bit silly, as there were two 'comedy' bands next  to each other - Steel Panther followed by Tenacious D. So I was struggling a bit. At least the rain had stopped and the mud wasn't quite as bad. It was a bit warmer out too. 

And then it was time for Metallica. We had found a good spot, not right at the front, but close enough that we could just about see what was going on. And then the crowds arrived. About 100,000 of them, all crammed into a small space. The show itself was great, other than possibly when James Hetfield told us we were all part of the 'Metallica family'. Before and after his being soppy, the show was very good. But I'm clearly not very good with large crowds and found myself getting more and more frustrated with being barged around.

So my festival was a curate's egg to that point - there had been good points, but also a fair few bits I hadn't enjoyed. But then the Sunday happened. The sun came out, the mud dried out, none of the bands required any rushing about to see and there were far fewer people on site. I actually began to enjoy myself. We spent a relaxing lunchtime wandering around the merchandising stalls, then the afternoon was spent sitting in our chairs, with a beer or two, taking in the music in the background. We stood towards the back when Black Sabbath were on, and then made a swift exit. We were on the road very quickly and were back in London by 1am. 

Much as I enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere of the Sunday, it wasn't really enough to persuade me to make a return visit. However, I've just heard that Iron Maiden and Motorhead are playing in 2013....

2012

Just like all the previous years, I have intentions of updating this blog on a regular basis, but I keep on failing to do that.
 
So, the start of a New Year. Happy New Year everyone. This year my intention is to update this blog on a regular basis. Let's see how I get on.

So I've got nine months or so to update you on from 2012. Some of the highlights were:

• Regular trips to Liverpool to visit Vanessa. She lives in the city centre which is very plush, renovated for its spell as the European City of Culture in 2008. The docks area is very pretty. The local accent though is not the nicest. We took trips to Southport which is a proper old-fashioned seaside resort - we walked along the pier and into the penny arcade - and to Crosby beach which is the location of an Anthony Gormley sculpture called 'Another Place'.

•  Lots more running. I did two marathons in 2012. The Edinburgh marathon at the end of May took place on a scorching day, the first (and possibly last?!) hot day of the year, which affected my time. The Rutland Water marathon was a beautiful course around the reservoir and nature. The temperature was around 4 degrees C, it drizzled a cold rain the whole day and the course was wet, muddy and hilly. It was quite fun for the first 10 miles or so, but the enjoyment slowly seeped from my body at the same time as the feeling flowed from my fingers. After 3hrs and 38 minutes, I was glad to finish and go to warm up inside. My sister took nearly two hours longer. She certainly looked a big chilly when she finished. The event was pretty poorly organised - no space blankets, no hot drinks, nobody to tell you where they'd put your bag, no medals. I have also become a fairly regular member of 'Park Run', a 5km event which takes place every Saturday morning in parks up and down the UK, and in fact in certain venues around the world. I have been attending the Wimbledon Common version.

•  Football away days with Pie took me to such interesting towns and cities as Bradford, Cheltenham and Chesterfield. The Bradford trip was mentioned previously, the Chesterfield trip was a small part of another weekend in Sheffield which followed that same now-traditional formula.
• Weddings - as always! Four this year, taking me to Acton, Suffolk, Bedfordshire and Surrey. They all had their moments. During the last one, I was dragged onto the dancefloor by four of my female friends and encircled such that there was no escape!

•  Cricket, the other standard event - trips to Lords and the Oval. The day at Lords was quite even, the day at the Oval was less so. The result of the series was disappointing from an English perspective.

•  Bit of 'culcha'. I went to see Richard III at the Globe Theatre. A fantastic show, amazing performance by the lead actor, but extremely uncomfortable seats. Vanessa and I went to see 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe' in a custom-made marquee in Kensington Gardens. The tent was a circular one, with a circular stage in the centre. Images telling the story were projected on the interior of the tent, while the actors were acting the story. The costumes were quite impressive too. The whole audience gasped when Aslan first appeared.
• Trip to Royal Ascot with my flatmate of the time. It was the first time I'd ever been and it was more fun than I was expecting. The Queen was there. I won precisely nothing.
• My friends came to vist from Singapore and we had a nice time catching up. Thought I'd better mention that as one of them is among the one person who reads this blog!
• I had two main holidays, went to a music festival and saw a small sporting event which took place in London. More on those in other posts.

So that was it, my 2012 summarised.